The late activist and best-selling author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries explores in a sequence of intimate vignettes the myriad experiences of a life richly lived through his relationships and writings as evaluated after his 2014 lung cancer diagnosis

Part I: The crooked finger -- The car accident -- People reluctantly on their way into the shadows -- The great discovery -- Quicksand -- the future is hidden underground -- the bubble in the glass -- Last will and testament -- The man in the window -- Hagar Qim -- The lion man -- Ice -- Turning time in a different direction -- A journey into the nether regions -- The young medical student -- A magician and an imposter -- A dream about a muddy trench in Flanders -- The caves -- The floating rubbish dump -- Signs -- The raft of death -- All this forgotten love -- Timbuktu -- A different archive -- The courage to be afraid -- Paris -- The hippos -- A cathedral and a cloud of dust -- Part II: The road to Salamanca -- Shadows -- Luminous teeth -- Photographs -- The way out -- Paris in flames, 1348 -- How long is eternity? -- Room number 1 -- The road to Salamanca, part 1 -- the man who dismounted from his horse -- While the child plays -- Elena -- the awakening according to Plato -- Winter night -- Relief -- Getting lost -- The road to Salamanca, part 2 -- Part III: The puppet on a string -- The earth floor -- Moving silently from darkness to darkness -- Mantova and Buenos Aires -- The stupid bird -- Who will be there in the end to listen? -- Salt water -- The buffalo with eight legs -- The secret of cave painters revealed -- The happiness brought by a rickety lorry in the spring -- The war invalid in Budapest -- A visit when something both begins and ends -- The woman with the sack of cement -- A winter in Heraklion -- Catastrophe on a German motorway -- Jealousy and shame -- The twenty-eighth day -- Meeting in a amphitheatre -- A thief and a policeman -- Youth -- The dead body on the bench for the accused -- A violent north-westerly storm -- A fictitious meeting in a park in Vienna, 1913 -- The puppet on a string -- Never being robbed of one's happiness